


you're my favorite kind of night

by cresswell



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, and bonding over loving people they can't have, and some making out, just chillin, with some angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-11
Updated: 2015-05-11
Packaged: 2018-03-30 02:37:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3919735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cresswell/pseuds/cresswell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She’s got a hand placed over her heart, her chest heaving. “Jesus, Murphy! I almost shot you!”</p>
<p>“Oh, please.” Murphy rolls his eyes. “You were too busy screaming.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	you're my favorite kind of night

Murphy’s just sitting down in front of the TV to see what’s on when he hears a sound he thought he’d never hear: the door opening.

The door to the _super secret bunker_ , to be more precise. And then he doesn’t hear anything.

That’s the part that really makes him nervous, because Jaha would have called out his name by now, or started spouting some metaphorical bullshit. But whoever’s just walked in doesn’t say anything.

He tries to be as quiet as possible, which is difficult, considering the floor is hardwood and he’s not familiar enough with it yet to know which floorboards creak. He tiptoes to the wall and slowly takes a cue stick (it’s not the best weapon, but it’ll have to do). By that time, the person’s close enough that he can hear their soft footfalls and shallow breathing. He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and then lunges into the hallway.

The person screams, loud and terrified, and he claps his hands over his ears, the cue stick clattering to the ground, before realizing that’s probably not such a good idea. He blinks his eyes open and sees the sheen of blonde hair, and then his eyes widen. “Clarke?”

She’s got a hand placed over her heart, her chest heaving. “ _Jesus_ , Murphy! I almost shot you!”

“Oh, please.” Murphy rolls his eyes. “You were too busy screaming.”

She punches him in the arm, hard enough that he stumbles back a little and thinks that someone must have been teaching her to fight. “Asshole,” she mutters, glaring at him in a way that reminds him of an angry kitten. “What the hell is this place?”

“Fuck if I know,” he shrugs, turning around to gesture grandly at the nice interior. “But I’m not gonna look a gift horse in the mouth.”

She looks a little dazed at her surroundings, her mouth parted slightly, and he watched as her eyes skim the whole room. “Wow,” she breathes, the hint of a smile pulling at her lips.

“How’d you get here, by the way?” He asks, because last time he checked, he wasn’t high up enough on her list of priorities for her to risk a fucking sea monster for him.

She gives him a confused look. “I walked.”

“You-” he splutters, abruptly at a loss for words, and Clarke steps back a little, looking nervous. “You _what?_ You _walked?”_

“That’s what I said, isn’t it? Why is that such a big deal?”

“Oh, no reason,” Murphy snarls. “It’s just that Jaha and I took a fucking rowboat across a sea with a man-eating snake in it.”

She looks even more shocked, if possible, and he realizes it’s probably too much stuff to be laying on her at once. “Are you okay? Is _Jaha_ okay?”

“Well, I’m okay,” Murphy says, gesturing to himself. “As for Jaha... I don’t know. We made it to the shore, and then he ran off into the forest to chase after a flying drone or something.”

Her face is now tinted green. “I think I need to sit down,” she says faintly.

Murphy knows this place isn’t even his, not really, but he suddenly has the urge to be a perfect host. “Yeah, yeah. Don’t sit on the couch, there’s a bloodstain,” he warns, just as she’d been starting to sit on it. “I’ll get you some water.”

By the time he’s returned with a glass of water and a plate of crackers, she’s sitting gingerly in the chair he’d been in before she’d arrived. He holds out the plate and glass to her. “Here.”

“Thanks,” she murmurs, but she doesn’t move to take either of them. Huffing, Murphy sets them down on the coffee table and throws himself into the armchair across from her.

“So,” he says. “You’re a long way from home.”

Suddenly, like the words are a trigger, Clarke starts crying. Murphy jerks back, pressing further into his chair. He’s never seen Clarke cry before. Well, that’s not completely true. She’d been kind of crying when he was strung up in a tree, hanging from a noose.

But still. This is different.

“I had to,” she says, giving an explanation even though he hadn’t asked for one. “I did what I had to do. It wasn’t the right thing, but I had no choice. And I can’t be around them now.”

“You mean... you did what you had to do to get everyone out of Mount Weather?” He asks hesitantly, just because he needs some clarification.

She nods, her face screwing up, and damn her for looking pretty even while crying. “Our people are fine, by the way. Well, not everyone, but as many as I could save.” She wipes a hand along her face, getting a pink smear across her cheek, and Murphy stands up suddenly.

“You’re bleeding,” he says dumbly.

“What?” She sniffles, holding her hands up in front of her face. The fact that she automatically looks for blood on her hands hits Murphy like a punch in the gut. “I don’t-”

“Just stay here,” he says, already hurrying off. “And don’t bleed on anything that looks expensive.”

He finds disinfectant and band-aids in the bathroom, and by the time he’s returned with them, she’s toed off her boots and shrugged off her jacket and is sitting on the couch, despite his warning. There’s a bloodstain on her shirt, too, and Murphy stops in his tracks, gesturing at it. “Really?”

She shrugs helplessly.

He heaves a sigh, acting more annoyed than he really is, and pushes her shoulder until she falls on her back, her hair splayed out around her like she’s Sleeping Beauty or some shit. She gives him a wide-eyed look, partly scared and partly indignant. “Murphy,” she warns.

“Oh, shut up,” he says, rolling his eyes, and in the corner of his vision he can see her fighting a smile. “I’m not trying anything. You’re cute, Princess, but you’re off-limits.”

He’d expected her to laugh- that had been why he’d said it, honestly- but she goes still and quiet, so he kneels down beside the couch, fingers hovering at the hem of her shirt. “May I?” he asks, over-exaggerating his version of gentlemanly.

Again, he’d expected her to laugh- or at least to smile- but she just nods, her gaze flitting up to the ceiling. He swallows a sigh and pushes her shirt up to expose her stomach, where he sees a shallow cut, curving along the arc of her stomach.

She flinches when he gently touches the skin around it, trying to sense any bruising, so he decides to try to take her mind off it. “How’d you get this?”

She makes a noncommittal sound, one he takes to mean she doesn’t know or doesn’t care enough to tell the story, and he rolls his eyes so hard his forehead hurts a little. He uncaps the disinfectant and is about to start applying it to the cut when her hand reaches out, lightning fast, and grabs his wrist to stop him.

“I’m bad with pain,” she says, her eyes clear despite the tear tracks on her cheeks. Her voice is made of steel. “Do you want to hear about Mount Weather? Talking will distract me.”

Murphy shrugs. “Sure, whatever.” The nice thing about Clarke is that she doesn’t mind that he doesn’t care, because she doesn’t really care either.

He squeezes a glob of the disinfectant onto his hand and waits for her nod before he starts rubbing it gently onto the cut. She inhales sharply, her back arching up with the sting, and begins to talk. “It was... nice. There was so much art there. And clean clothes, and soap, and shampoo.”

“There’s shampoo here,” he interjects. “And soap. And a whole damn shower.”

She smiles faintly. “In my cell there was a Van Gogh painting. Like, a real one, I think. And there was this whole big hall filled with nothing but art and antiques. And the _food_ , oh my god. It was to die for.” She laughs abruptly, and the expression is pretty on her face. “Oops. Terrible word choice. God.”

He sneakily watches her face and sees the smile slowly fade and get replaced by something much sadder, so he decides to talk. “Sounds awesome. But how’d you end up here, all alone?”

Her face gets even sadder, and Murphy mentally curses himself. “Like I said, I did what I had to do.” Her voice is very quiet. “But I wish I never had to.”

“So...” Murphy frowns, trying to piece together the puzzle. “You were exiled?”

She shakes her head, and he feels himself sag in relief a little, because the day the princess got exiled would be the day all hell broke loose. “Not exactly, no.”

“Well then what?” He wipes his hands free of the disinfectant and peels on the largest band-aid he can find. Clarke gives a shaky breath of relief. “Sit up so I can do your face.”

“You don’t have to-”

“Shut up; I’m doing it.”

She gives him a small smile of gratitude and does as told, sitting up with her hands folded in her lap. They’re nearly eye-to-eye like this, and Murphy can feel her gaze searching his face, although he’s not quite sure what for. “You never answered my question.”

“Hm?” She’s distracted, her eyes on his hand as it reaches to clean the cut on her face.

“About why you’re here.”

“Oh.” She looks down at her lap without moving her head to much. “I ran away.”

Murphy’s hand jerks, his whole body reacting, because that had _not_ been what he’d been expecting. Clarke laughs humorlessly, her eyebrows furrowing. “It sounds so stupid when I say it out loud. Like I’m a fucking rebellious teenager.”

It’s the first time he’s heard her say the word _fuck_ , and the sound of it in her soft voice does something to him that he’d rather not think about. “Why the hell would you do that?”

She looks up until her eyes meet his, blue against black. “I killed every person in that mountain, all for my people,” she says quietly, and Murphy does his very best to not react. “I bear it so they don’t have to.”

He’s not quite sure what to say. He starts applying the band-aid to keep his hands busy, and she tilts her cheek up to him so the cut is accessible. He doesn’t like her like this: pliant is not something Clarke Griffin should ever be. “Bellamy’s going to be looking for you.”

“Bellamy’s not going to find me,” she says immediately, keeping her face deceptively blank, but Murphy thinks he’s got her figured out.

“So, what?” He challenges, getting edgy and mean again even though she doesn’t deserve it and he’s just scared. “You’re just planning on staying here, is that it? All alone with me?”

She’s looking up at him from under hooded eyes and something about the moment feels off; dark. She moves, and for an odd moment he thinks she’s going to slap him, but then she’s kissing him.

Hard.

He can almost taste her anger against his mouth- it’s not _real_ anger; this he knows. It’s just a cover up for how fucking sad she feels. She knots her fingers in his hair so she can kiss him as hard as she pleases, and he’s suddenly very glad he’d decided to take a shower earlier in the day. He’d like to say this isn’t true, but it takes him a few shocked moments to react, and by then Clarke’s pushed herself into his space, pressed against him in a way that makes him take in a sharp breath against her mouth. Their teeth knock and it hurts and Clarke’s a fucking _biter_ , holy shit, they should not be doing this. She is off-limits and they should _not_ be doing this.

He repeats it over and over in his head while he stubbornly doesn’t do anything to stop it, his hands moving to run up beneath her shirt, skimming over the skin of her sides so that she shivers and trembles in his arms. He gets an odd sort of sick pleasure to know that he’s getting to experience her like this before Bellamy-

Bellamy.

He pulls back abruptly, his hands stilling low on her hips. He can taste blood on his lips and Clarke’s pupils are blown wide and why did he stop, again? Oh, yeah. Because Bellamy.

He wipes the back of his hand across his mouth and gives her a lopsided grin. “Well well _well_ , Princess. I didn’t know you had it in you.”

She swallows hard, looking angry and stubborn, and climbs into his lap on the floor. “I’ve got more than just that.”

“Whoa, whoa,” Murphy exclaims, tilting his face away as she moves back in to kiss him. Her lips slide against his cheek, and she moves them down until they’re at his neck. He can’t help but roll his head to the side and let his eyelids flutter closed at the sensation. “ _Fuck_.”

She hums in triumph, sucking a little bruise into the juncture between his neck and his shoulder, and he unwillingly shakes himself out of his reverie. “No, no, no. We can’t.”

She kitten-licks at the hickey, making him nearly jump out of his skin. “Sure we can.”

“Clarke, no.”

She looks up at him, hurt clearly written across her face. “Why not?”

“Like I said, you’re off-limits.” He really hopes his breath doesn’t smell too bad up close. “I’m not gonna do that to Bellamy.”

Anger blazes in her eyes and she pulls back her lips in something that resembles a snarl. “Fuck you. I’m not Bellamy’s.”

“No, I know. That’s not what I mean.” She’s so fucking pretty, even more so up close. It’s really ridiculous. “I mean I... respect Bellamy. Don’t tell him I said that,” he adds hastily. “And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Bellamy’s kind of in love with you. And I’m not gonna get in the way of that.”

She blinks at him in confusion, her arms still looped around his neck. “Bellamy’s not in love with me.”

Murphy rolls his eyes. “Yes, he is. Jesus Christ. Raven and I had a bet going, you know.”

“On what?”

“On how long it would take for you two to stop being stubborn assholes and just get together already.”

Clarke looks even more confused, her eyebrows knitting together, and Murphy had never pegged himself as the king of guy who thought of girls as _adorable_. “We’re not getting together,” she says, but he can hear the wavering note of uncertainty in her voice. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I left.”

“But you’ll go back,” he says, and she looks down. “You have to go back. You care about all those losers too much.”

“I care about you,” she says softly, her gaze lifting to his again.

He huffs out a sigh to hide the fact that his chest is getting the tiniest bit fluttery. “Okay. I know. But it doesn’t change the fact that that’s just who you _are_ , Clarke. You care about everyone so much. And nothing could change the fact that Bellamy loves you. That’s just who _he_ is.”

Clarke looks down again. “Well, who are _you_ , then?”

He opens his mouth to answer, then pauses. “I... can’t answer that.”

“Well, you know what it’s like to love Bellamy,” she sighs, giving him a knowing look.

“Yeah, I- wait.” He gives her a wide-eyed look of confusion. “Wait. _What?”_

She arches an eyebrow in amusement. “I said you know what it’s like to love Bellamy. Don’t think I never noticed. Don’t think the _whole camp_ never noticed.”

He gapes at her, and her face lights up a little bit with a half-smile. “Come on, Murphy. Don’t deny it.”

“I was never-” he starts, but she gives him a look that says _really?_ He sighs for what feels like the millionth time, before muttering, “Okay, yeah whatever. I was in love with him. Emphasis on _was_.”

She holds up her hands in front of her to show surrender, but there’s a grin threatening her lips. “Point proven.”

“Okay, so what? Doesn’t change the fact that he loves _you.”_

She bites her lip. It’s a tantalizing thing to watch. “No, I know. But you know what it’s like to love him, right? So you get it.”

_“But,”_ he interjects, ducking his head so her lowered gaze has no choice but to meet his. “I didn’t run away from it.”

“What happened, then?” She asks. “How’d you stop?”

He shrugs. “It just faded. One day I woke up and realized the feelings weren’t there anymore. I still liked to be close to him, yeah, and cared about him a lot- which isn’t easy to admit, by the way,” he adds, and she nods in understanding. “But he just wasn’t it for me.”

Interest sparks in her eyes. “Have you met someone who’s it for you?”

He looks down, hating the feeling of color rising to his cheeks, and Clarke claps in excitement. “Ohmigod! You have, haven’t you?”

“Shut up,” he says good-naturedly, and she throws back her head to laugh. “I certainly don’t know if she’s _it_. I’ve only met her once. But she’s sure _something_.” He thinks of Emori, in all her fierce, beautiful glory, and can’t help but smile in a way that he is sure looks lovestruck.

“Tell me about her,” Clarke requests, rolling out of his lap and climbing onto the couch, hugging a pillow to her chest. “This is so _exciting_.”

He laughs before he can stop himself- a real, genuine sound- and Clarke smiles at him, her eyes crinkling at the corners. "This isn’t a fucking sleepover, Princess,” he says, climbing up onto the couch next to her and grabbing the TV remote.

She leans forward and kisses his cheek, giggling at his bewildered expression and the blush that inevitably follows. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he says, because hey, who is he to turn down kisses from an exquisitely pretty girl? “Just... remember what I said.”

“I will,” she replies quietly, a soft, sad smile on her face. “Hey, Murphy?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

He smiles at the glow of the television, feeling Clarke’s eyes on his face. He loops his arm around her shoulders. “Anytime, Princess.”


End file.
